New floodlight, podcasts, geocaching (posted from home)

(this post covers 29-31 December)

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Sunday, 31 December-

Today we went to Chambersburg to visit our Maine buddy, Red Retriever. For the last two winters she has been living in Chambersburg for the winter. When we last visited her in Maine last October we introduced her to geocaching so it was natural we’d do some geocaching today. We first had an excellent burger at the new Fuddrucker’s, then hit the “See Our What??” cache west of town. This one took us to a mini-golf course and deer enclosure behind a restaurant. We walked the perimeter trail and enjoyed seeing the deer (including a big albino buck) and two talkative turkeys. Then we celebrated with an ice cream cone at the restaurant. Light rain started as we left the restaurant so we abandoned plans to hit “Hamilton Hideway”. We instead hit “John Brown’s House” in town which I knew was a short walk. This one is interesting because it uses two little ‘birdhouses’ for the adventure. The birdhouses are locked with combination locks and the combination is provided in the instructions on geocaching.com. The first contains the GPS coordinates to the second but we already know from the instructions that it’s somewhere around the old jail so we did this one without using the GPS. The third geocache of the day was “Dam if you do, Dam if you don’t” at the now-removed Siloam Dam. It was a micro-cache, meaning that there was nothing in it but a tiny little folded-up log page. We even had to bring our own pencil for that one. But it was still fun to try to guess the hiding place.
On the way home Labashi and I listened to podcasts to while away the time. We listened to an “Old Time Radio” podcast of radio programs in 1947 and 1948. These included George Jessel, Dave Garroway, and Hugh Downs in their heyday. The best part was a story from a series called “The Unexpected”. This episode was an old-time-adventure story about a guy who goes hunting in Brazil and runs into his exact duplicate—right down to the same scars--- and sees him eaten by pirhana. He later is mistaken for the dead man and unexpectedly gets a large sum of money. But the unexpected twist is he’s arrested by the FBI for treason; his double was an agent of the Nazis and was hiding in Brazil. This one was particularly hilarious because each time the words “the Unexpected” were said (and there were many), there was a pause, and then a deeply echoing voice yelling ‘the un-ex-PECT-ed” in a very dramatic fashion. I’ve got to hear more of these.
We also sampled a podcast of “The Wildebeat”, which is about hiking and wilderness topics, this one about nutrition.
That evening we watched five more episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” (episodes 6-10 of Season 2). Oh, yeah--- our buddy Red Retriever is a diehard fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” so that gave us something to chat about. Cool!
And though it was New Year’s Eve, we went to bed early—about 1130—and just barely heard any New Year’s noise. About 0130 I was startled awake by a loud BANG in the house. Labashi was completely out of it and didn’t stir. Fortunately that turned out to be a suction-cup-attached mirror which had fallen down in the bathtub and it wasn’t long (once by heartbeat returned to normal) till I returned to zee-land.

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Saturday, 30 December –

Yesterday I received my latest ‘Rider’ magazine and read an article about two-wheel drive Ural motorcycles. I’ve always been interested in these and this reminded me I’ve wanted to drop in and talk to the owner of the local Ural dealership in Red Lion. While his web site says he’s open on Saturdays 1000-1400 I thought it a 50-50 proposition he’d be on holiday this weekend. But who cares? One of my favorite Starbucks is along the way and it was a nice, sunny, warmer-than-normal day for a motorcycle ride.
Sure enough the Ural shop was closed but I did indeed enjoy reading the Times and sipping a mocha-affogato at Starbucks.
That evening we watched the first five episodes of “Grey’s Anayomy”—Season Two. Well done, Shonda!

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Friday, 29 December –

This morning I updated the blog and scanned my daily news sources. Lately I’ve taken to scanning CNN, Google News US, Google News Canada, France24, York Daily Record, York Dispatch, and National Park Service Morning Report sometime during the day. I like to check these daily when we’re home but when we’re on the road we go for days without any news. When I connect to the web to upload my blog updates and pick up our email, I quickly scan CNN and Google news but that’s about it. And the interesting thing is I don’t miss the news while on the road. Once we’re back home I tend to get back into the news-scan habit.
Today I rode the motorcycle into York and bought a motion-detector floodlight to replace the wireless motion detector setup we had returned to Lowe’s earlier in the week. I thought that setup was innovative in that it used a wireless, battery-operated detector which could be placed anywhere. We mounted it on a tree and pointed it toward the house and storage barn. The detector communicates up to 100 feet (by radio frequency) to two socket-units which screw into a regular floodlight fixture’s bulb sockets. Then you screw the floodlight bulbs into the other side of the socket-unit. This setup worked fine for a week or so but one day I noticed one of the lights had a delay in turning on. They had both been popping on whenever motion was detected (after dark) but now one would turn on before the other. The more significant problem, though, was the slow-to-turn-on unit would not always turn off when it was supposed to. At first I just removed the bad socket-unit and thought I’d turn it on for another. Then I realized Lowe’s wouldn’t want to do that from a paperwork perspective—they’d want the entire set. So I removed the set and boxed them up with the manual and receipt and Labashi was kind enough to take it back on one of her trips to town. This afternoon I spent quite a while at Lowe’s checking out the various hard-wired motion detector units and found one to replace our existing floodlight unit. This one was only a little more than half the cost of the wireless setup ($30 vs $50) and has two motion sensors, giving it a 240-degree field of view.
Back home I took down the old floodlight and saw I had a problem. The old one was not mounted on a box. The wires just go in a hole in the siding. That in itself is no big deal but we had just recently dry-walled the inside. Fortunately, we had used drywall screws and had not yet done the taping and mudding; all I had to do was take down the drywall panel. Installation was a snap from there. The new motion detector is an improvement over the old one in that it’s wider-than-normal view ‘looks’ along the side of the building and catches a small area that was in a blind spot for the other one. It also matches the characteristics of the coach-light motion sensor out front. Now both lights have the same after-motion light delays and also allow us to use the lights normally, i.e., we can turn them on from inside the house by simply turning the always-on light switch off and then back on within a second.
I also spent a half-hour finishing off the trenching at the southwest corner of the house and for a short distance along the front of the house. Fortunately, these trenched areas are not visible from the road due to landscaping.
That evening we finished Season One of “Grey’s Anatomy” and viewed the extra features. So, McDreamy neglected to mention his secret, eh? We particularly enjoyed meeting creator Shonda Rhimes and learning about ‘Shondaland’.

“Kinky Boots”, “Little Miss Sunshine”, "The Black Dahlia", “Grey’s Anatomy”, trenching, contractor proposal problems (posted from home)

(this post covers 20-28 December)

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Thursday, 28 December-

Today I dug out the trench along the west end of the house. I first had to remove a layer of decorative stone and six concrete stepping-stones to clear the area but that wasn’t difficult. The digging went pretty well too. The whole process took about three hours. While digging I listened to a ‘This American Life’ podcast about ‘reruns’ and ‘do-overs’ in our lives—very interesting. The now-uncovered row of siding is mostly intact but has a few badly-oxidized areas and a few holes. I’m not yet sure how to address that. I’ll have to take a closer look and decide whether I have to replace the row-and-a-half of siding or could somehow repair the damaged areas only. The argument for replacement is probably strongest given that I should take that opportunity to replace the Celotex and plywood underlying that damaged siding.
That evening we watched four epidodes of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. I’m beginning to wonder about the show’s message. It’s entertaining in a did-you-see-what-he/she-did kind of way but for two of the three female-lead interns to be having sneak-off-to-the-closet sex with their bosses in the workplace and the other to have an oft-mentioned history as an underwear model is a little much. The strongest female character is the resident (Bailey) and I think she’s great but she’s known as ‘the Nazi’. I’ve only seen seven episodes but so far the message is it’s ok to break workplace rules put in place to avoid hate and destruction so long as you ‘think you might be falling for the guy’ (Meredith)--- or you want to get ahead of the other interns (Cristina). We’re also struck by Ellen Pompeo’s interesting face. She’s young and she’s old at the same time—perfect for her role.

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Wednesday, 27 December-

Today we finished clearing out the storage unit and turned in the key. It was great to have everything out of the way while we’ve been slowly updating the basement. We still have three sections of outer half-wall to do but can’t finish them until we solve the occasional drainage problem outside those walls. But we now have enough enclosed storage to bring everything back and eliminate the monthly rental cost.
The latest contractor’s proposal has us thinking again. We’ve decided to dig down about a foot along the end of the house so we get the soil away from the siding. That will at least keep the termites away and will get the wet soil away from the sill area. It does create a trench and we’ll have to keep an eye on that in any heavy rains but I’d be very surprised if that foot-wide-by-a-foot-deep trench would fill up and overflow since most of the landscape in this area drains away from the trench. If it does threaten to overflow, I can trench out through the yard for about 30 feet to get to a low-enough area to establish better drainage.
This evening we started a new series—‘Grey’s Anatomy’. I’ve seen this one at the video store for some time and I’d think, “Nah, I’m not ready for a hospital drama”. But today I was ready (possibly because we’ve seen everything else worth viewing in the store…). We watched the first three episodes of Season One. We love it. It’s amazing how quickly we can get invested in the lives of these characters.

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Tuesday, 26 December-

Today I made an adjustment to the motion-detectors. I’ve noticed some nights that passing cars will occasionally set off the motion detector on the pole-light. I switched it to test mode and adjusted the sensitivity down. I also adjusted the angles of the floodlights on one of the other motion detectors and I may have created a problem. After I made the adjustment I noticed that one of the lights would trigger on with motion but would not trigger off after the test mode’s 30-second wait period after last motion. In checking it out, I found a notice on the unit that said the floodlights should have at least a 30-degree downward tilt (that notice wasn’t in the manual!). Though I changed the angle back to lower-than-30-degrees it still does not turn off reliably. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Back it goes.
We also received an unexpected call today. One of the other contractors who had come to look at our drainage problem but never called back called today to say he has a proposed solution. He’s recommending a product called DeltaMS, which is essentially a dimpled-plastic-sandwich panel that goes against the foundation wall. It both waterproofs the outside of the wall and provides an airspace where any water approaching the wall can drain down easily to the footer. This would mean digging down to the footer along two walls and installing footer drains. Also, the grade level of the swale on the end of the house would have to be lowered to keep surface water away from the house. He quotes a $4300+ figure for this work. I don’t know. We like the waterproofing-the-wall part of this but the deepening-the-swale part isn’t good as it would make the hillside in the yard too steep. I think we’d be more inclined to try the Multi-flow idea first and then if that doesn’t drain water away fast enough, perhaps do the DeltaMS thing.
I took advantage of the relatively warm weather to go jogging again at Rocky Ridge Park. Today was a lot easier than just two days ago—maybe it was the espresso in the frappacino I had before the jog.
That evening we watched 'The Black Dahlia". What a disappointment! It's a Brian DePalma film and has Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, and Hilary Swank. It's about a particularly-gruesome unsolved murder in 1940's Los Angeles. The extra features section tells the story behind the story and that's the best part of this DVD. The movie becomes hopelessly mired about mid-way through and leaves us wondering how that happened.

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Monday, 25 December-

Merry Christmas! Labashi and I took it easy today. I spent much of it setting up and playing with Labashi’s Christmas present, an MP3 player. I bought it for her to listen to podcasts. We’ve found that we can only occasionally find good public radio programs while traveling. Also, Labashi likes to work both outside and in her workshop with a radio playing. I had thought about possibly subscribing to a satellite-radio service but it finally occurred to me that the answer is to time-shift. Once I found some good sources for free podcasts, I knew this would work. I’ve been collecting podcasts for the last couple of months for her and I have a good bit of our music loaded up in my laptop’s music library so it was easy to load up the MP3 player. The sound is great through the default earbuds, through a set of portable external speakers I also got her for Christmas, and through the interconnected headphones we use while watching movies in Mocha Joe.
That evening we watched the extras on the ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ DVD. This set of extras was a good one.

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Sunday, 24 December-

Today is Christmas Eve and we spent a good bit of it at Lowe’s and Home Depot. That was great; both stores were virtually empty and we had plenty of help. Labashi is starting a new interior project. She wants to update our interior doors. We spent much of the day figuring out how we might go about replacing the bedroom, bathroom, and hall-closet doors. It would be about $400 to replace the slabs or $700 to use pre-hung doors. Back at home we found that the doorways are significantly out of square. If we replace the doors alone, we’d still have to take off the trim and square up the doorframes before doing all the hinge and door-set work. I’d rather go with pre-hung doors if we go that far. But $700 is too much for us and we realized that even if that the result isn’t that good. So she has decided to upgrade all of the old door-sets with new lever-style brass units and will define multiple raised panels on each door with mullion, a style of wooden trim. If that doesn’t turn out as well as we’d like, we’ll then re-look at the replacement options.
That evening we watched ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, a quirky little movie with Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, and Abigail Breslin. I don’t know that this one would make my favorites list but it did have some funny moments. Here’s a plot summary from IMDB: “Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive's father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Her uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive's grandfather is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.”
Saturday, 23 December-

Today I spent much of the morning cruising the web. My find for the day is France24.com, a brand-new French competitor to CNN. I love being able to see their live feed on their web site and even like seeing some fresh commercials. Very cool!
It was another warmer-than-normal day today so I rode down to Rocky Ridge for an end-to-end jog. That one seemed to be more of a struggle than usual. I’d guess it was a 1:35, timewise. That evening we watched ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ with Merrill Streep and Anne Hathaway. Good one!

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Friday, 22 December-

Today I installed a new viewer port in our front door. We’ve had a small port (or ‘peephole’) in our front door for many years and it never was very good. Last week we had one of the neighborhood kids come to the door after dark I couldn’t see her through the viewport. The problem turned out to be a Christmas decoration in the way but it drew my attention to how poor the view is, particularly at night. I did a couple of searches on the web and found I could get a one-inch brass-and-glass viewport for only ten bucks at Lowe’s. Of course I had to spend another $10 for a hole-saw capable of cutting through the metal skin on the door but that’s still cheap. The installation only took about ten minutes and this viewport is MUCH better. I also brought back shelving units and another load of ‘stuff’ from our storage unit that afternoon.
That evening we watched ‘Kinky Boots’, a predictable-but-pleasant Brit-com about a shoe factory about to go out of business—until the owner finds there’s a market for ‘special’ boots -- for drag queens. And, no, I’m not talking about female drag racers here. Cute movie.

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Thursday, 21 December-

This morning started off with a bang. The landscape contractor withdrew his proposal in this morning’s email. Our email of yesterday must have scared him off. Or maybe not—maybe something else came up. In any case, this guy was the only one of the three we had come out to look at the problem who we ‘clicked’ with. Thinking back on our dealings with him, we thought it a bit odd that he had told us on initial phone contact and then again when we first met here at the house that he’s not a hydraulic engineer. We said we weren’t looking for an engineer, we were looking for someone with practical experience fixing drainage problems. He said he has plenty of that and that seemed to do it. But this morning his email withdrawing the proposal once again says he’s not a hydraulic engineer and he can’t guarantee the proposed solution. He recommends we hire a hydraulic engineer. On the one hand this is a shame. On the other, we may have dodged a bullet. One of the questions I had asked in our email was about the backfill sand for the Multi-flow drainage pipe. This particular solution requires very coarse sand and defines it according to very specific sieve-test characteristics. We called around to local sand suppliers and couldn’t find a coarse-enough sand. So, in our mods to the proposal we wrote those specs in and we asked how we could address this apparent problem. He is, after all, listed as a Multi-flow contractor on the vendor’s website and presumably has done Multi-flow installations before. Maybe this type of question is why he backed out. In any case, we were looking for the type of guy who can withstand a question like that. And, interestingly enough, I received a call from one of the sand suppliers today who suggested I take a look at the sieve-specs for a line of specialty sands available from one of their suppliers. I’ve found the sand and I can get it locally. Looks like we’re going to do this project on our own.
We spent the rest of the day moving more of our ‘stuff’ from our rental storage unit to our basement. We also drove into town and picked up a sample of the specialty sand and did some shopping.

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Wednesday, 20 December-

Today we moved two storage cabinets and a load of stored goods back from our rental storage unit. We are on track for having everything out by the end of the month so we can eliminate the $50 per month rental cost. Today we also sent the modified proposal for work to fix our drainage back to the landscape contractor. He proposes to do a couple of days-worth of work for a little over $6000. That sounds high and we’re sitting on the fence about whether or not to go forward with it but in any case we wanted the proposal to more clearly spell out the work to be done.
That afternoon I rode the bike down to Rocky Ridge for an end-to-end jog. I had started later in the day than usual and by the time I finished the hour-and-a-half jog the sun was setting. And it was setting in a spectacular way. The clouds were lit up by a mix of the golden-hour pinks and purples. Very, very nice!

“The Yearling”, “Winchester ‘73”. fluorescent swirling, “Thank You for Smoking”, 'very coarse' sand (posted from home)
(this post covers 12-19 December)

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Tuesday, 19 December-

Today we spent the day writing a response to a contractor’s proposal for work to resolve our occasional drainage problem at the end of the house. The proposal leaves too much open to interpretation so I worked on editing the words and Labashi did a spiffy aerial-view drawing to nail things down. Doing this forced us to really think through how this would work and whether the proposed plan is likely to play out the way we want. This led us down some interesting paths. In researching the requirements for installing the special drain pipe we want (Varicore Multi-Flow), we learned that it’s critical the contractor use sand graded as ‘very coarse’—and that has a very specific meaning. ‘Very Coarse’-graded sand has a particle size between 1 and 2 millimeters. We called up a local sand supplier and asked if they have (and know they have) such a sand. He said they have ‘concrete sand’, is that ok? It took awhile but we learned that no, their ASTM-standard-C33 ‘concrete sand’--- as well as their ASTM-standard-C144 ‘mortar sand’—would be too fine and would eventually clog the geo-textile cloth around the drains. That started Labashi and I on a long conversation about whether we could take this on ourselves. At this point we have a long list of questions and a re-written, much-more-detailed proposal to go over with the contractor. He seemed like a good guy when we met with him to see the problem. He may well be able to show us he’d do a good job. In any case we now have a much better understanding of what we’re getting into.
That night we happened to catch the last episode of "Everest: Beyond the Limit". All I can say is WOW. The helmet-cams give us incredible views, both of the mountains in the distance and the very scary views of the 'trail'. This episode is also controversial in that members of the team happen upon British climber David Sharp who lies freezing to death along the trail and they determine he's beyond help.

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Monday, 18 December-

Today I made the mistake of thinking the end of deer hunting season would mean I’d be able to get on the shooting range at Dillsburg on a beautiful (63 degree!) day. I was surprised to find the parking lot and both the rifle and pistol ranges full. Ah, well— I needed to warm up the bike for its oil change anyway so nothing lost. Back home Labashi helped me grunt the bike up onto the center stand and I took my time getting the oil and filter changes done and in doing a general check-over of the bike’s fasteners. And that meant, of course, that I had to do a checkout ride, right? What a great day it was for riding.
That evening we watched “Thank You for Smoking”, a real treat of a movie. It’s brash, it’s hilarious, and it has lots of little surprises. Here’s an example: as the camera pans past the local Catholic school we see its name on the brick sign out front: “St. Euthanasia”. No mention of it, no lingering camera shot. Perfect font, perfect low-key lighting. It’s just there.

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Sunday, 17 December-

Today we visited my high school buddy and his wife. We’ve not seen them for six months so we had a lot to talk (and laugh) about. We went out to lunch and spent the rest of the day chatting, showing pictures and just having a good ol’ time. That evening we made it home in the nick of time. We had forgotten all about the special two-hour Survivor Finale. Fortunately we didn’t miss much in the first hour. From our perspective the vote worked out great—we were both pulling for Yul.

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Saturday, 16 December-

In the morning I was cruising the web doing some Christmas shopping when I blundered upon a notice posted by the vendor for a critical item. Today’s the last day to order and get the delivery by Christmas. YIKES! Is it that late already? I had to make a couple of quick decisions but got’er done.

Today was another extra-nice day weather-wise so I jumped on the Concours and rode down to Rocky Ridge Park for my end-to-end jogging route. I forgot my watch but figure I did about a 1:32 or so. And good news—no toe-joint pain this time.
That evening we watched ‘Pirates of the Caribbean- Dead Man’s Chest’ with Labashi’s favorite actor- Johnny Depp. I thought it was OK. The effects were pretty amazing but the tomatometer (at RottenTomatoes.com) tells the tale: 54% critics rating. And this review snippet: “Mr. Verbinski (the director) is a very skilled traffic director” (meaning: there’s lots of action but where the heck is the storyline?)

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Friday, 15 December-

Today I attended the Christmas party for my former work site at a local bar/restaurant. I really enjoyed this get-together. It was great to catch up on the latest news and see my buddies and several other retirees who went out shortly before me. It’s amazing how young and vital retirees are these days!
That evening Labashi and I watched the bonus disk for ‘Desperate Housewives’. They did a great job on this bonus disk, giving us a feel for the pressures and difficulties associated with producing a hit series.

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Thursday, 14 December-

This morning we hung the two 30W x 24 H x 15D cabinets above the washer and dryer. This will allow Labashi to get all the washing supplies up and out of sight and still have storage room left over for other stuff. Then we hung two 4x8-foot pieces of drywall in the rec room plus two smaller pieces in the hallway.
That evening we watched Survivor, Cook Islands.

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Wednesday, 13 December-

Today I installed the final of four fluorescent shop lights in Labashi’s workshop in the basement. A simple thing like buying and installing a few shop lights had turned into emails and phone calls back and forth with the bulb manufacturer and with Home Depot’s resident electrical expert. I learned that the ‘swirling’ effect we occasionally saw in the T12 bulbs could come from many things--- high voltage, low voltage, improper fill on the tubes, inadequate burn-in of the tubes, and wrong or inadequate ballast. The bulb manufacturer suggested I simply wait to see if it goes away (further burn-in time) but did say it’s unusual for a fixture to be designed for both T8 and T12 bulbs as claimed by the fixture manufacturer. The Home Depot guy says the most likely cause is the ballast-bulb mismatch. Bottom line: if the problem persists, I’ll have to either swap out the bulbs for the smaller-diameter T8 bulbs or swap out the fixtures for higher-quality ones. I’ve since noticed that the new fixture has some swirling but the others seem to have settled down. We’ll see. That afternoon we installed drywall on the wall behind the washer and dryer, then assembled two wall-hung cabinets for that spot. It only took us 25 years to get around to closing in this wall.
That evening we finished off the Season Two episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’. I think we were expecting a little more of a bang on the season-ending episode but it did its job in laying the groundwork for new directions next year. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed this season and look forward to more (after a rest!) on Season Three.

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Tuesday, 12 December –

I spent the morning on the web and blogging. That afternoon I rode the Concours into town to good ‘ol Starbucks for coffee and papers. I love sitting there in the big softie chair reading the New York Times and one or the other of the York papers. I had thought I’d take a walk at one of the parks on the way home but then decided I’d better change the oil in the bike. Once home I rounded up all the oil-change tools and supplies but then I hit a problem; I couldn’t get the bike up on its centerstand. This is a common problem with this model bike and I believe my aftermarket tires are slightly lower than the stock profile, making it even tougher. I generally have Labashi give me a hand but she was out shopping. I tried the old trick of leaning the bike over on its kickstand in order to get a board under the tire and that additional height ALMOST did it. But the bike nearly fell to the opposite side (away from me) and that was enough of that. I’ve read too many stories about other Concours owners doing the ‘thousand-dollar-drop’, i.e., incurring a thousand dollars-worth of damage to the bike’s fairing because of a simple drop on its side.
That evening we watched two movies on TCM. We blundered upon ‘The Yearling’ just as it was starting. We’ve been wanting to see it since our Florida trip last winter when we stayed in the Ocala National Forest and learned about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Pulitzer-prize-winning 1938 book of the same name. Good movie!
Next up on the evening’s playbill was ‘Winchester ‘73”, a Jimmy Stewart potboiler about a guy who wins a one-in-ten-thousand rifle in a shooting contest only to have it stolen from him the same day. The storyline follows both the rifle as it changes hands among various ne’er-do-wells and Stewart’s character. I’ve found I really like these older movies for their sets and costumes as well as their portrayal of historic events and people. In this one, for example, we see the tough-as-nails cowboys about to draw on the marshal (played by Will Geer) after he demands their guns before they can enter the town saloon. Lead is about to fly when someone happens to call the marshal by name—Wyatt (as in Wyatt Earp). The cowboys suddenly decide it’s a fine idea to hand over their weapons after all. It’s very clear that the cowboys know not to mess with Mr. Earp. We also learn that the local Indians are particularly dangerous right now—have you heard the news about the Little Big Horn? The bloodthirsty local Indian chief (“Young Bull”) is, of all people, Rock Hudson. And Tony Curtis has a two-line bit part as a soldier. Interesting, interesting.

Walters Art Museum, IKEA, King’s Gap, Pakha’s Thai House (posted from home)
(this post covers 9-11 December)

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Monday, 11 December -

Today the weather was fantastic. Here it is mid-December and it’s almost 60 this afternoon. We spent the day on little chores. I did the daylight testing and setup on the third of our new motion-detectors, this one a solar-powered one. Then I spent four hours on a one-hour project. I built a table which both encloses the pressure-tank for our well and serves as a stand for our dehumidifier. This opens up space around Labashi’s new workshop sink. It should have taken about an hour but for one little thing—the copper water lines and power cable around the expansion tank meant I couldn’t just build the table and set it over the tank. I had to fit it and there wasn’t enough room to get the screwdriver on the screws. And just as I thought I had it whipped I bumped the drain valve on the expansion tank and spewed about a pint of water into the area. Fun, fun, fun. Actually, the table looks good and is very stable so I’m happy.
That afternoon we had a brief visit from work buddy Rabbit who stopped in on his motorcycle on the way home from work. I enjoyed hearing stories from his recent rider-safety course.
Afterwards I zoomed over to the video store and picked up the ‘Desperate Housewives, Season Two’ disk set so we can watch a few more episodes tonight.


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Sunday, 10 December -

Today we took advantage of the nice weather to take the Miata to its winter storage garage at my brother’s house. We had thought we might be able to meet up with some friends in the area. Labashi’s high-school buddy who lives in Maine in the summer had recently come home and we were hoping to meet up with her but we only saw her very briefly—she had to work. My brother had something going on and my high-school buddy and his wife weren’t home so we struck out all around with that idea. On the way home we decided we’d take a walk at King’s Gap State Park. As we drove in we saw there was a Christmas celebration going on at the mansion. We’ve been to the park several times but the mansion had always been closed. This gave us a chance to check out the mansion and still have time for a walk in the last part of the day. The mansion now serves as a retreat facility for state government environmental agencies. It was re-habbed in 2000 as part of a $1.6M project to establish an environmental-education facility and it’s very new and very nice. We enjoyed a walk around through the demonstration garden and spent a few minutes with the live great-horned owl and it’s keeper in the training center. In the gift store I bought an excellent orienteering map of the park and took copies of the three orienteering courses. I’m a sucker for orienteering maps and can spend hours looking at them. Later this winter I’ll go over there for some compass work on the orienteering courses and do some bushwhacking to interesting features I see on the map (like ‘passable cliff” and ‘impassable cliff’). Then we went for a walk out the scenic-view trail, returning just before dark.
On the way home we had a little gustatory adventure. We wanted to try someplace new and couldn’t think of anything along our route when I remembered there’s a Thai restaurant in Dillsburg. We found ‘Pakha’s Thai House’ along US15. That turned out to be a GREAT choice. Labashi tried the sweet apple-yum salad and I had satay for an appetizer. Then I had a kang-kai curry and Labashi had pineapple fried rice, all excellent and very fresh-tasting choices. This is great; we often come home this way after visiting my brother or friends in the western Cumberland Valley and now we have a whole new menu to work our way through.
That evening we watched a little TV and I was very happy to see footage of Alaskan bush pilot Don Sheldon. My other-brother, Orat, is an amateur pilot and gave me three books about bush pilots on my last visit. All three of them speak of bush-pilot-legend Don Sheldon and there he was setting a landing-altitude record by landing on Mt Denali to rescue a sick climber from near-certain death.

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Saturday, 9 December –

Today we needed a break from the home-improvement work and decided to spend a day in Baltimore. We did a fairly-early start (for us) and were parked outside the Walters Art Museum by 1000, only to learn that the museum doesn’t open until 1100. I noticed a young lady walking by carrying a coffee and asked if there was a shop nearby. That led us to Donna’s, a nice (and very busy) little neighborhood café and coffee bar a block north of the Washington Monument, at Charles and Madison. They had a superb coffee mocha and their ‘everything’ bagel was fantastic.
Though we had found a traditional curbside metered parking spot, we noticed something new about parking in this area. The city has removed all the parking meters from many of the blocks and in their place has installed a ticket machine. Instead of feeding an individual parking meter next to your car, you walk to the nearby ticket machine and buy a ticket to place on your car’s dashboard. The cost of parking is still a dollar an hour but the ticket machine takes both quarters and credit cards. Tickets do not have a specific parking spot or block identified so I assume they are good for anywhere this style of parking is permitted. The removal of the parking meters is very striking visually. The sidewalks look extra-wide and the streetscapes are less cluttered. Great idea! Hopefully we start to see this type of parking in our local towns.
At the Walters, we had another pleasant surprise. Both the Walters and the Baltimore Museum of Art now have free admission and free use of the audio players. We learned from the audio-players lady that the museums had been given additional money by the city and had started the free admission policy on 1 October.
We first visited the headliner exhibit about the mid-19th Century landscape paintings of Gustav Courbet, a French painter. Courbet was known for being a coarse and controversial person and developed a mastery of painting with a palette-knife. The multiple layers of paint give his paintings a unique sense of depth. This traveling exhibit had been developed by the J. Paul Getty Museum and was intended to be accompanied by nature sounds and by lights simulating the passing of day and night. The idea was to make the experience of viewing the Courbet paintings an ‘immersive’ one. The Walters chose not to add the nature sounds or day/night lighting but did use theatrical-style spotlights for the ‘Winter’ rooms of the exhibit. The scrims on the lights allowed bright light to fall only on the paintings in these darkened rooms, giving us viewers the effect that we were looking out windows at the surrounding landscape. As we exited the exhibit we were accosted by an artsy young guy who surveyed us about the exhibit. We were a bit surprised to see how closely our opinions matched on this one. The survey had us rating various questions (like “Was the music a more-immersive or less-immersive experience for you?”) on a numerical scale and we were always within one digit of each other’s opinion.
After Courbet we spent another hour on the 4th floor looking at the French 18th century paintings. I particularly liked the styles of Gerome and Bonnat. It had been hilarious to learn that Courbet so disdained th highly-detailed and polished realism of Jean-Leon Gerome that he (Courbet) called the donkey he used to carry his easel and supplies ‘Gerome’. Life is tough all over!
We then walked through to the Asian exhibit since Labashi wanted to see some Japanese screen paintings. I loitered in the samurai exhibit and loved seeing how a samurai sword is forged, polished, and assembled.
By mid-afternoon we were ready to move on and drove back out of the city and around the beltway to the IKEA store in Whitemarsh. We like going to IKEA for ideas. It’s amazing to me that we buy so little there but we spend hours looking at the Swedish design ideas. It’s like going to a different type of museum. This time we were looking for ideas to modify or replace our entertainment center setup. We didn’t find anything suitable for a direct replacement but did come up with some ideas to modify what we have. These ideas will have to ‘cook’ a little more; they’re not quite fully-formed yet.
On the way back up I-83 we stopped at Timonium and I introduced Labashi to fish tacos at Baja Fresh. I had first tried them while on a business trip to San Diego (the self-proclaimed ‘fish-taco capital of the world’).
That evening we watched ‘Patriot Act’, a movie by stand-up comedian Jeff Ross. Jeff took along his home video camera on a stand-up tour he did with Drew Carey in the early days of the war in Iraq. Good movie.

Another house problem, motion-sensor installs, suspended-ceiling replacement
(posted from home)
(this post covers the period 30 November- 8 December)

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Friday, 8 December-
This morning Labashi finished replacing all the suspended-ceiling tiles with new fiberglass tiles. In the meantime I got out the Sawzall and cut two feet off the standpipe for the washer discharge so we can finish drywalling behind the washer-dryer and can mount two more storage cabinets there. Late in the day we drove down to Home Depot and bought the drywall and cabinets for next week’s projects. On the way home we did our grocery-shopping chores at Eastern Market and our local Giant.

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Thursday, 7 December-

This morning I installed the second motion-detector device. This one goes on the pole-light. The idea is that you remove the light fixture, install the motion-sensor device atop the pole, then install the light fixture atop the motion-detector device. This one wasn’t quite so easy as the last one. I had to drill the keeper-screw and use an extractor to back it out and find a replacement screw. But otherwise it was an easy install. That afternoon I installed the third unit, this one solar-powered. This was another super-easy installation but I won’t find out how well it works for a few days. I first have to allow the solar panel to charge up the battery for three sunny days before first turning it on.
That afternoon Labashi and I fixed a long-standing problem with the gridwork of the suspended ceiling in the basement. We’ve had a problem with a few tiles sagging below the grid. The bottom line here was an improper original installation. Each grid should measure 47 x 23 at the opening but some of the openings were as much as a half-inch off on the long side. This made it impossible to keep all the ceiling tiles in place. A close examination revealed that the problem was really in only one row and we could resolve it by cutting one end of the main tees and put in a block from the other ends of the tees to force the entire grid to shift one-half inch in the bad row. That took all afternoon and required judicious use of a Dremel tool for the cutting process but we finally were able to get the right measurements throughout the grid. We installed new fiberglass ceiling tiles in a few rows and called it a day. That evening Labashi was feeling extra-anxious to see her new ceiling and installed the great majority of the remaining tiles.

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Wednesday, 6 December-

This morning I installed the first of the three motion-sensor fixtures we bought at Home Depot a few days ago. This one is very interesting in that the sensor is battery-powered and communicates wirelessly with two remote units. The remote units installed in our flood-light fixtures in less than a minute. I simply unscrewed the bulb, screwed in the remote unit, then screwed the bulbs into the other side of the remote unit. The sensor unit can be mounted anywhere within 100 feet of the remotes. After installation we spent a half hour testing and adjusting the unit and that was it; instant motion-detector.
That afternoon I had a checkup with my periodontist on my latest bone-graft procedure and all looked good. I learned that he has used a different bone-graft material this time and had recently attended a professional seminar where he met other periodontists who had had problems with the old material.
That afternoon I installed a new double-gang electrical box and two duplex outlets to power four new overhead shop lights. These go over Labashi’s workbench in the mud room. That evening I installed three fixtures and their bulbs. They provide a lot of light but after an hour or so I noticed one bulb ‘swirling’. I’ll have to check on that.

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Tuesday, 5 December-

This morning was very cold but I decided to go ahead and ride the motorcycle to Mechanicsburg for my dental appointment, a routine checkup. Afterwards I stopped at the local Starbucks. I noticed an ad in the paper which had a decent price on a fishing boat. My brother and I have recently talked about sharing the cost of a fishing boat so I thought I’d check it out. I rode up along the Susquehanna to the boat dealer and priced a series of boats and motors. But once I got home I realized I hadn’t really seen the right deal yet.
That evening we watched ‘Art School Confidential’, another flawed movie. We were disappointed in this one. It started out well and had lots of talent (including John Malkovitch) but somehow went awry in the second half of the movie. RottenTomatoes gives it only a 35% on the ‘critics tomatometer’. Ebert and Roper gave it two thumbs up but this is one of the times they are off the mark.

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Monday, 4 December-

This morning Labashi and I removed old ductwork and installed insulation in two rows of the basement ceiling. The ductwork had been there for a wood stove installed by the previous owner. We sold the stove last winter after many years of not using it. We couldn’t use the stove routinely because the smoke particles bothered Labashi. We had decided to leave it in place as a backup if we ever lost electricity to our electric baseboard heat system for more than a day or so. But the over-sized old stove was always in the way and we finally decided we could use the propane heater from Mocha Joe as our backup heater. The insulation we installed today finishes off the insulation project for the basement ceiling. We spent that afternoon at Home Depot and Lowe’s buying replacement ceiling panels for our basement’s suspended ceiling and buying three motion-detector fixtures for outdoors.

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Sunday, 3 December-

Today I spent the morning on the web. Later in the day I rode down to Rocky Ridge Park and jogged my ‘end-to-end’ route. Time today was surprisingly good— an hour and 28 minutes. It normally takes me over an hour and a half for this route. Rocky Ridge Park is the site of a Christmas lights extravaganza. I didn’t get to the park until 1500 so by the time I finished the lights were on and Christmas music was playing. Very nice!
That evening we watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, the Al Gore presentation about global warming, an excellent film.

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Saturday, 2 December-

Today we found a problem with our house. As part of preparation for drywalling a section of the basement, I pulled back the insulation to inspect the areas where I had repaired some termite damage last winter. The good news is there’s no evidence of termites; the bad news is I found several small wet areas. I had checked this wall for water intrusion during a hard rain last week but apparently it took some time for the water to percolate into the ground to the wall. The amount of water is very small—less than a teacup total—but it will only get worse. This intrusion is the result of the basement wall having been built too low. If the wall had been built one course higher there would be no problem. But at this height it resulted in backfill being placed against our home’s exterior aluminum siding. We spent much of the morning checking out the problem and attempting to identify contractors who might be able to help. Labashi was able to catch two contractors who were working in the office on the weekend and we will be talking further with them next week. Bottom line here is we have to do some serious work outside to provide additional drainage away from the house and we must get the backfill away from contact with the siding.

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Friday, 1 December-

We spent the day assembling and installing six additional hanging storage cabinets in our ‘mud room’ in the basement. These cabinets match the ones we installed on the opposite wall last summer and will allow us to eliminate our open storage shelves and give the room a much less cluttered look. The project went very well but did take most of the day.
I received a nice little surprise in the mail today. It was a letter from my three-year-old grand-niece. It’s a single sheet of paper covered in dramatic pink scrawling. I’ve since learned the highly complex lines represent music. It must be a symphony. Wonderful!
That evening we finished up watching the first half of Season Two of Desperate Housewives. It’s amazing to us how addictive this series is. Just when we’re starting to feel we know what’s coming next, there’s a new surprise.

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Thursday, 30 November-

Today I spent the morning blogging. In the afternoon I did some Christmas shopping and relaxing and reading the papers at Starbucks. It’s tough duty around here.